Lots to see in ITLUS visit to the Garden County

A hot and sunny day saw a lot of people gather for a very varied ITLUS tour in the Garden County. It is so valuable to see first-hand the things that are going on around the country and to witness the enterprise that is taking place.

The beautiful Tinnakilly House in Rathnew was our starting point and from there we headed to two local visits, O’Hanlon Herbs and Wicklow Rapeseed Oil.

First let me tell you about Wicklow Rapeseed Oil. This enterprise was set up by Keith Symes, a young man who came into active farming in recent years. He was always farming there on the family farm but he then went to study engineering, first in Tralee and then in Glamorgan in Wales. Using these qualifications, he then worked in industry and when he was given the farm he began to ask many difficult questions about a future in farming. The farm had always had some tillage and he had grown rape for years.

When Keith took over the farm, he began to look more closely at options to help make tillage worthwhile. A farmer he visited in Britain was crushing oilseed rape for the food market and he began to look more closely at this option. He did a lot of work on the topic and decided to begin to crush oilseed rape for oil. However, he was aware that there were many others doing this and began to look for ways to make his product unique.

Finding a niche within a niche

He started with the belief that many people find oilseed rape oil a bit heavy and strong and he wondered if he could produce an oil that was preferable for consumers. He realised that he needed to find a niche within a niche to help make it worthwhile.

Having looked at many options, he decided to go with a single variety of spring rape with specific husbandry guidelines that gave him a unique selling point for his product.

He considered growing the rape and getting it processed by someone else but decided against this because he knew he had to ensure the uniqueness of his product. He also needed control of drying and cleaning and storage, as all of these could impact on oil flavour.

These decisions meant that he had to purchase drying, cleaning, crushing and bottling facilities for his business. Keith did considerable research on all aspects involved in the operation and the pros and cons of different options. He started out with a domestic press and used the experiences gained from this to plan a path for the business.

Taste the difference

Keith set himself the task of trying to find a lighter oil than conventional rape oil. He tested seed from different varieties and from spring and winter crops and decided to concentrate on a single variety of spring rape. Spring rape tends to have lower oil content than winter rape and his work would suggest that it may also have other different characteristics.

He is now also buying the same variety from local farmers, which is grown specifically for him. Keith said that he is producing a premium niche product and he is demanding a premium price to make it worthwhile. So, not surprisingly, he is operating under the logo “Taste the difference”.

With an eye to markets from the very beginning, Keith had done a lot of research in this area also. He completed quite a number of courses with the retailers and this has helped him get in as a supplier to a number of the major retailers.

He worked a lot with Bord Bia and they have helped directly with tasting panels. Local enterprise funding organisations were also important, especially with help for promotion to attend shows, etc.

Modified farm buildings

With regard to cleaning, Keith organised his cleaner to have the admix (the big material that will not pass through the seed sieve) taken away for bedding cattle and the fines, which are smaller than the seeds, are used in cattle feed. So he can get some use from everything he grows and buys. He is currently considering a move to swathing for harvest due to customer concern about the use of glyphosate.

In the farmyard, Keith modified a number of the existing sheds and upgraded them for use as stores. Roller doors were fitted and one was dedicated to processing. This is now quite an impressive farm building with a long narrow shed divided by hanging plastic strips into crushing, storage and bottling compartments.

The company was launched in November 2013. Keith is currently crushing about 100t of rape per annum. With every tonne yielding about 300 litres of oil, that’s 300,000 litres to be sold in 0.5 or 0.25 litre bottles. The crusher has a capacity of about one tonne per day.

He is selling this through some of the retailer chains and some is sold online. He is also selling some to Britain. He told us that the main demand point is January and so crushing is not uniform throughout the season. He tends to produce to order as the oil has a shelf life once crushed and the rape itself can be a more saleable asset.

O’Hanlon Herbs is a very impressive business operation in Ballyknocken on the outskirts of Glenealy. This business was established back in 1988 to supply fresh herbs to Irish customers and it has grown considerably since then. It is primarily involved in the growing of herb seeds in pots for sale in supermarkets. Sounds simple but it requires high levels of sophistication to get it all right.

The first thing we noted was that herbs are food and therefore high levels of food security had to be implemented for the visit. All of the production operation happens under glass and that is a big overhead in itself. Pat Coyle took us around and showed us what is involved in the production process.

The potting process

The first step, having complied with washing and clothing requirements, is the potting process. All of the compost is purchased in large bales from Northern Ireland. This comes with the nutrient requirements for the plants incorporated and mixed.

The potting process is automated, with compost being spilled down on top of moving pots that are loaded automatically into a moving conveyer. The surplus compost is then brushed off, back into the compost filler, and the pots go on to the seeding line.

Here, a rotating cylinder fitted with an internal vacuum lifts seeds during its rotation (vacuum pulls in a seed to plug each hole) and when the vacuum is cut during rotation, individual seeds drop onto the top of the compost at a specific point during rotation. The double movement acts to uniformly place the seeds across the circle of the pot which is also moving. The pots are then assembled and transferred to large trays on which they remain for their stay.

Because the nutrients are in the compost, only water is needed for irrigation. At the end of the potting process, water is put into the trays and the water soaks up into the compost in the pots. Then the tray is transferred to the germinating rooms. After about seven days, they are germinated and then transferred to the glasshouses where they are irrigated on a regular basis.

Possibility of harvesting rainwater

For irrigation, water is put into the large trays and the pots stand in it for 10-12 minutes. Then the water is drained off and the pots are standing on dry ground.

The water that is drained off is cleaned and recycled. All of the water used comes from their own well but they are looking at the option of harvesting rainwater. The irrigation system is controlled by computer.

The herbs are alive and growing at the point of sale so the customer is getting fresh product. A range of herbs are grown, including basil, chives, coriander, flat parsley, mint, rosemary and thyme. A small amount of cut herbs are also sold but this is done using product grown elsewhere in the country. All of these products are supplied to the major retailers.

Energy is the biggest cost in the system, Pat said. This is used as light as the houses have at least 15 hours of light in winter and as heat because the temperature in the houses can drop quickly if the sun is covered by clouds. Heat requirement is supplied from a 720kW biomass burner fuelled by wood pellets. This is provided and maintained by Clearpower. It burns virgin woodchip from local forestry, which is delivered by trucks. This requires two to three loads per week in winter but perhaps less than one per week in summer.

Heat is stored in a 110,000 litre thermal buffer tank beside the burner so that heat can be transferred rapidly into the houses when necessary.

The ITLUS group visited the farm of Sylvester Bourke outside Arklow where the main concentration was on trials being conducted using chicken litter in different combinations with either nitrogen or urea. Sylvester farms a combination of owned and rented land and now grows maize, oilseed rape and beans as part of a cereal rotation where winter barley is the main crop. The farm also has a poultry unit producing eggs.

Sylvester’s brother, Martin Bourke, is a Teagasc advisor and he and Mark Plunkett from Johnstown Castle explained the objective of the trial. Basically it is viewed as a nitrogen response curve trial using poultry litter.

Spring barley

The trial was on spring barley which was planted on 31 March and followed by a few very wet days with three inches of rain. The dry-litter treatments were actually applied by hand and either ploughed in before planting or tilled in during planting. Where bagged nitrogen was used a proportion of it was applied into the seedbed with the remainder top-dressed.

A poultry manure trial was also conducted last year looking at the effect of method of application on growth and performance. There are more treatments tested this year. Last year, the surface-applied poultry manure, which was disked-in during sowing, produced by far the best looking plot early in the season. This had also been the finding of farmers locally in the preceding years.

However, the apparent benefit of disked-in versus ploughed litter did not carry through to yield.

Difference this year

This year the observations in the trials have been flipped. The ploughed-in manure seems to have performed much better than the disked-in treatment this year. If nothing else, this emphasises the need to let the combine be the final arbitrator rather than just appearance. Both Martin and Mark emphasised that the relative appearance of all the treatments was changing on a weekly, if not a daily, basis and so caution is urged in forming opinions at this time.

Different amounts of nitrogen were applied as poultry litter to different plots to help judge the efficiency of nitrogen use. Some plots also received artificial nitrogen only, either as ammonium nitrate or urea. The nitrogen figures used for the poultry litter were those calculated from tests but Mark indicated that these were broadly in line with the official figures when the moisture content was taken into account. It was the available N component that was counted in the application.

Some treatments also received poultry manure plus either CAN or urea. The poultry manure was a dried layers product with the application rate and nutrient value adjusted according to moisture. Total rates of up to 254kgN/ha were applied in treatments. A few plots also looked at broiler litter as an organic matter source. Basically the trial is examining the nitrogen replacement value of poultry manure.

Best-looking treatment

The field was treated with additional P and K and trace elements to help ensure that these were not limiting to yield potential so that nitrogen was the most likely cause of yield variation.

Among the best-looking treatment on the day was where 254kgN/ha of dried layers litter was tilled in at planting. A neighbouring plot with only 135kgN/ha of tilled-in litter also looked very well. A treatment with 150kgN/ha in total from 68kg of ploughed-in litter plus 82kg of urea also looked very well.

Interestingly, a similar treatment that used CAN rather than urea did not look as good at this point.

Mark pointed out that some of the treatments being tested applied more organic nitrogen than is legally allowed. It was also difficult to explain why the urea-treated plots look better than the comparable CAN-treated plots at this point.

It is also worth noting that the plot looks better where the same amount of N was applied as layers versus CAN. Specifically, a plot that received 100kgN/ha in the form of CAN did not look as good as one which received 90kgN/ha as layers ploughed in.

The comment was made that layers is quite high in calcium and Martin said that the natural pH fall in fields has been slower where layers had been applied in the past. Mark said that there were no emergence issues where the urea was used in the seedbed.

Martin commented that the nutrient off-take from six-row winter barley may well be higher than the textbook numbers as he has found that soil levels fall more following this crop.

Martin said that he is soil-testing all of the home farm every year. Measurements will always be better than a textbook and Martin stated that getting the balance of nutrient supply and offtake is precision farming at its best with no big capital cost.